


there and back again

by funwars



Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: M/M, also theyre married bitch!, and im an avid tgc denier, merlin is hard of hearing and has adhd this is how this whole hell fic started
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-15
Updated: 2018-04-15
Packaged: 2019-04-23 03:28:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14323560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/funwars/pseuds/funwars
Summary: Harry is unconscious after Kentucky, and for once in his life, Merlin reflects.





	there and back again

**Author's Note:**

> i'm an avid golden circle denier so for all intents and purposes this is all correct and im always right. i love pushing things onto merlin and am so so interested in his character, so i hope this does him justice (unlike tgc did). if you want to talk about things i'm funwars on tumblr :)

The knot between his shoulder blades trembles a little, the stress he holds all in his upper body finally showing its ugly head after days of watching over an unconscious Harry. His clipboard is filled with plans that he knows Harry won’t want when he wakes up; wishful thinking for a new eye that could pair with the glasses in some way, or even just restore Harry’s vision back to normal. Merlin smiles bitterly to himself as he scrolls through his notes, the scrawling getting messier and messier as time elapses. He feels like he can  _ breathe  _ again, but he knows his body won’t relax until Harry opens up his eyes. Or. Eye.

Merlin watches the tapes again when he can’t sleep, which is probably counter-productive. His whole being fills with  _ pride _ as Harry makes his way through that church despite everything--despite knowing that Harry couldn’t control himself, despite the fact that he should be  _ disgusted  _ by the lack of remorse, despite the bile that rises in his throat whenever he thinks of Valentine--because everything aside, it shows that Harry’s great at what he does, and fuck is Merlin proud. He tears his eyes away when the gunshot comes and the feed goes dead, urges the shake to leave his hands by rubbing them on his thighs, and does a lap in the too-cold apartment before settling down to work again.

Between all the work of restoring major powers and keeping up with Kingsman, he’s really only been sitting with Harry on his breaks and when he can, overnight. Nearly every night, until the nurses pry him away. He knows he can’t sit there forever, and that staring at Harry long enough won’t make him wake up, but he does it, anyway. He’s never been one for the rules.

Now, he doodles in the upper left-hand corner of his notes, shaky little butterflies and lopsided swirls, and for once in his life, he reflects

* * *

The gym is rather peaceful around him, but he’s seething at this punching bag like it murdered his family. The weeks of hard, pointless work, his boss thunking every paper that the recently-fired worker had failed to fill out onto his desk without so much as a word; the final straw was his parents suddenly deciding that they missed him after three years of radio silence. His joints throb in time with his heart in his throat, his jaw aches from being clenched so hard, he can see the first hints of blood through the wraps around his fists. Hamish wants to knock this damned bag across the fucking gym. So, he rolls his neck, squares up, breathes, and repeats. Jab, jab, cross, left hook--a sharp pain shoots up his arm when he hooks and he yells, pushing at the dead weight and pacing off to the bench. There’s people looking, but he doesn’t care. He’s afraid if he stops, it’ll catch up to him, and he’ll break.

His boss will ask about the bruises, no doubt. No one wants to go in and file their taxes with someone whose knuckles are torn to shreds. He sits down on the bench, head in his hands, elbows rested on his knees, one of which is shaking so fast it may as well fly off. Hamish watches as sweat drips off his nose and onto the mat, trying to steady his breathing enough that  _ maybe  _ he can give it another go, this time with more kicking to prevent him from completely shattering his hands. He lifts his head and stares at the bag, swinging helplessly back and forth, twice as slow as his knee is bouncing. Well, why  _ not? _ He takes a second and pushes himself up again, about to square up to the bag and start over, when--

“Uh, excuse me!”

“ _ What?” _ he bites before he can stop himself, spinning around on a heel and flinching when he realized what he did, “Sorry, sorry, I’m not-- _ yes? _ ”

The man is in a well-tailored suit, which doesn’t quite belong at a gym. His hands are tucked into his pockets, and despite looking like a fish out of water, he looks totally calm. It gets under his skin.

“I’m sorry to ah,  _ interrupt _ , but, Hamish, is it?”

The question catches him off-guard and he relaxes, looking down at his hands and deciding to start unwrapping them, “And who are you?”

“How awful of me, I’m George. I barely think this is the place, but I happened to be passing through and I’d be interested in doing business with you.”

“Oh,” Hamish doesn’t know what he was expecting, but  _ this _ certainly wasn’t it, “I probably have my card somewhere--”

“No need, a friend recommended you to me. Is there a time tomorrow that would work best for you?”

George isn’t interested in filing his taxes, but more interested in the technology he’s worked on for his no-name business. Every time Hamish asks how he’d know about it, George deflects and continues asking about a certain algorithm or the security system of the building. Later, he will look back and shake his head on how  _ poorly  _ Gawain was doing his recruiting, but then again, recruiting a handler probably wasn’t nearly as pressing as finding an agent. No one really had ever  _ taken  _ an interest in his personal work, let alone an interest in him outside of “Good job” or “Stop that”, so he’s naturally drawn to the attention.

George slides him a card, tells him to come down to the Kingsman tailor shop on Saville Row, and the rest is history.

He remembers one recruitment exercise with frightening clarity. Him and the few others in the handler trials (shorter, less complicated than that of the agents) were taken on their supposed day off. Tied up, trapped, screamed at to confess about what they know about Kingsman. 

Perhaps it’s always been one of his greatest fears--he  _ knows  _ how to shut up, that’s never been the problem, but something about all that negative energy focused only on him still rattles him to his core. He dreams about it sometimes, though he’d never admit to being shaken so much by a recruitment exercise that  _ he  _ still uses to this day. The gun pressed to his forehead was cold, the ropes holding him tied too tight around his wrists, the man he’d never seen before screaming at him to give up anything he knew. The gun was cocked, he set his jaw and stared the man in the eyes as a noise similar to the gun firing (but much quieter) rang out, but he remained upright. 

“Well  _ done _ , Hamish,” Chester had said afterward, a look in his eyes that made him uneasy, “the silent type. I like it. Welcome to the team.”

Chester never had really liked his silence.

He treaded lightly for his first year or so at Kingsman, only speaking up when spoken to or on a mission, figuring it was the best way to make his way up to the top—like any regular company. He was merely one letter of the phonetic alphabet then, handling the agents on mundane missions with little risk factor. And it did absolutely nothing for him.

Chester had overheard him talking to the Merlin of the time, wondering aloud whether he’d be transferred to better missions soon or he’d rot away in the basement of HQ like that old woman he couldn’t help but feel a little bad for.

“What was that, Hamish?” Chester stated calmly, hands in his jacket pockets, staring daggers through the man shocked in front of him. And when he said nothing, Chester smiled. “You think you’re good enough for big missions, no? You perform well on a few little missions and suddenly you’re ready to take on the world?”

“No, sir.”

Chester ground his teeth, clearly wanting him to speak up, always searching for an  _ excuse  _ to kick his sorry ass to the curb, but he just watched him back, face calm as ever, the old Merlin biting back a smile as Chester turned on a heel and walked off.

For a few years, he worked closely under that Merlin. He was an older, English man named John, on the stockier side, and Hamish could tell that he was a much more fitting mentor. Gawain only could teach him so much, and occasionally they’d pass each other between briefings, but until his retirement, John was who he learned the most from.

He remembers being called in for the first time and panic washing over him at what it could potentially be. Only a few months at a job and he was already being kicked out. Instead, when the doors to his future office slid open, John was staring frustrated at the bits and pieces of eyeglasses on his desk.

“I’m missing something and I’m not sure what,” he starts, forgoing any formalities (which Hamish absolutely admired), “the communications are a little fuzzy and I can’t seem to get it to clear up for the life of me. Can you take a look for me?”

John completely knows what’s wrong, Hamish is sure of it. It takes a couple of adjustments here and there, tightening one thing and rewiring another, before Hamish closes it up with a satisfied sigh. “Do you have another pair that you wouldn’t mind me tinkering with? I have a few ideas to make them a little more user-friendly, if I have your permission.”

John just pushes the pair he just fixed towards him and smiles. “No skin off my back. Debrief me when you’ve finished.”

A few days pass and Hamish sets a pair of glasses in front of John.

“I cleaned up some of the circuitry to give it a slimmer look, programmed a more user-friendly interface when wearing them to keep instructions clear while making sure to not inhibit vision, and the tap to turn on feature has been made easier. I’m currently working on night vision, but I thought I’d return this pair before then.”

“Don’t you need them to work on?” John asks, turning the glasses over in his hands.

“No sir, I actually made myself a pair to mess with on my own time. That way I wouldn’t interfere with your work.”

John hums in surprise and gestures to the large spread of monitors behind him, and Hamish’s fingers twitch at the idea of using such a machine. “By all means, walk me through these.”

Rumors spread fast in Kingsman, and soon enough, he meets Agent Galahad in person for the first time.

He’d worked with him a good amount of times prior, although Galahad wasn’t really one for the more lackluster missions that Hamish handled, but they considered themselves rather decent acquaintances. They’ve talked a little after a mission was over and Galahad was to report to some higher up but was procrastinating doing so to prolong the inevitable scolding; he had a tendency to fuck around with the instructions a little on boring missions. Hamish knew a few things about him, his name was Harry Hart, his dog’s Mr. Pickle (he had snorted at the absurdity of it, but Harry’s voice was unamused on the other end), the few things in their database, but nothing too far below the surface.

Harry slams down a beaten up pair of glasses onto Hamish’s desk and the latter jumps a little at the abruptness, opening his mouth to say something but getting cut off.

“I have debrief in a few hours and I can’t handle Chester getting all up in my arse about breaking  _ another _ pair of these, and rumor has it you’re a wizard with these things. Can you fix them?”

Hamish looks down at the glasses, then back at Harry, his mind spinning with the compliment and the abruptness and holy  _ attractive;  _ “Nice to meet you too.”

“ _ Well?” _ Harry urges, folding his arms over his chest.

“You didn’t give me much time to fix them fully, but I can restore them to working order and enough that  _ Arthur _ and Merlin won’t be able to tell they were broken based on your footage. Good?”

Harry nods, and finally flashes a smile. “Nice to meet you too. I can’t really leave because I’d get tracked down by someone and dragged to debrief, so, I’ll busy myself with the furthest thing possible.”

“Make yourself useful and grab me a cup of tea,” Hamish says as he sits down and pulls out his tools, and Harry chuckles and turns on a heel to do so.

* * *

John’s retirement was a bittersweet occasion. It wasn’t a surprise to anyone in Kingsman that Hamish would be taking up the role of Merlin--the last two years have been more John slowly handing over the reins than anything else, and it was really only a matter of time. Hamish had asked why he was waiting so long to retire, to which John had shrugged, taken a sip of scotch, and said, “Wanted to go out on an even seventy.”

All the agents are sitting in their respective chairs, whether it’s in person or the holograms that Hamish has been beta-testing for a few months now. They flicker a little and are a little off-kilter, and he makes a mental note to fix that.

Harry sits to his right, the first seat, and it’s the first time Hamish has seen Harry be genuinely interested in something occurring in Chester’s office. Chester, who’s sitting at the other end of the table in favor of letting John and Hamish stand at the head of the table, looks like someone pissed in his liquor. The other agents seem genuinely sad that John’s leaving but excited for what Hamish might bring to the table, and it fills Hamish with something between excitement and dread.

It’s rare that they toast to someone who is choosing to leave rather than killed, and when Hamish looks to John afterward he can see tears welling in the corners of his eyes.

“Well, Merlin,” John says as he takes the last of his things out of the office, giving H-- _ Merlin _ a sad smile, “it’s been an honor working with you.”

When he walks into the office, everything is different. It’s empty of any personal belongings, it feels too big, and he’s a new person. The blinking wall of modems makes him nauseous, and his reflection in the darkened screen in front of him looks...wrong. He stands behind the desk, hands bracing himself upright, watching himself in the screen and trying to will the shake from his hands. The whole company rests on his shoulders. He controls the agents, the other handlers, the training exercises, the technicians,  _ everyone _ . He imagines killing an agent with a careless mistake, not being able to say anything but  _ explain _ himself--

It reminds him of when he was young and reading on his parents’ bedroom floor. Six, maybe, although it’s been ages since he’s thought about it. Everything before his diagnosis was hazy. Not thinking, he had pulled the blankets off the bed and wrapped them around him. Because he was cold. And it made sense.

“Um, ma?” he asked quietly when he walked into the kitchen later, once the book was finished, and by the look his mother gave him, he really stepped in it.

“I was sitting on your floor and I got cold, and I--and I pulled the blankets off your bed.”

She sighed, and  _ fuck  _ it stung. “Go make it back up.”

“Can I at least  _ explain _ \--”

“Make the bed! _ ”  _ she snapped, slamming her hand down on the table and making him jump, “Get on up there and put the damn blankets back on instead of fuckin’ about.”

There’s a knock on the open door and it forces Merlin out of his thoughts, whipping his head around to meet Harry, the man leaning against the doorframe with a bottle of unopened scotch and two glasses in his hands. “If you’re going to have a crisis, might I suggest closing the door?”

Merlin breathes out a laugh and straightens up, turning to lean against the desk. “What’s this for?”

“Thought we might christen your new office.”

“Hot,” Merlin mutters without thinking, watching Harry laugh and set his things on the table in front of the two couches in the corner.

The two of them don’t talk much, opting for silently drinking and taking in the weight of the situation. The vast room sways around the edges as Merlin exhales smoke up towards the ceiling, head tipped back on the arm of the couch, more concerned with watching it drift upward than anything else in the world. Harry sits on the floor, leaning with his back against the couch, his head precariously close to Merlin’s outer thigh. He nurses a glass that’s long since empty, balancing it on his knee as he stares off towards the other side of the office.

“You think you’re gonna redecorate?” Harry asks, breaking the long, comfortable silence.

“Probably not.”

Harry leans his head back more to try and make eye contact with Merlin, but Merlin’s still watching the remains of smoke wisp away into the darkness above him. “Why not?”

“Never been one for decorating.”

“I can help if you want.” Merlin finally lifts his head and looks at Harry, something heavy and  _ tired  _ in his eyes.

“I have so much other work to do. Maybe someday.”

Harry hums and watches Merlin as the latter lets his head fall back against the arm of the couch, bringing the cigarette to his mouth and taking a long, slow drag.

“I have so much shit to do,” Merlin mutters on the exhale, and Harry can’t help but chuckle at it. When Harry doesn’t respond, Merlin shuts his eyes and ashes the cigarette off to the side of the couch.

“ _ Fuck _ .”

It takes close to a month, but he gets used to it. The heavy workload feels like a burden he was meant to carry. He learns the hard way to keep a second bottle of pills in his desk, after staying the night and being confused when all his tasks take double the time and it’s near impossible to stop moving. He’s thankful it was a simple mission he could hand off to someone below him, although explaining to Harry both why he left and his ADHD diagnosis was something he could have lived without for a little while longer. The new recruitment exercises get finalized, the glasses get updated to where Merlin wants them, Kingsman as a whole is bustling with a new and improved energy.

Harry swipes his clipboard one day, leaned against the side of his desk, pushing Merlin away with one hand and scrolling through the schedule with another.

“Your schedule makes me want to claw my eyes out.” He holds the clipboard out and Merlin yanks it from him, sitting back down in his chair.

“What’s it to you?”

“How do you have time to...exist?”

“I’m doing just fine, thank you.”

“Need I remind you?”

Merlin shoves Harry’s shoulder and mutters, “Out of my office.”

As soon as he’s able, he carves out time to get to the gym. He can’t go regularly, since his daily schedule can fluctuate time and again, so it was only a matter of time for him to crash on someone else’s session.

He’s finishing his last round with the punching bag when Harry walks in, the door thunking shut behind him.

“Never heard of a tech wizard in a gym before.”

Merlin lowers his hands and watches as Harry blatantly gives him a quick once over, smirking slightly. “Never heard of a field agent asking to go butterfly catching. But you don’t see me bitching.”

(It had been a spur-of-the-moment thing, Harry rushing in and explaining his love for lepidoptery in one breath before asking Merlin if he would help take observations. There was picnic involved. Merlin suspected that Harry didn’t need help at all.)

“Touchè. I see you’ve been holding out on me.”

Merlin ducks his head and breathes a laugh, pushing some of the sweat-slick hair off his forehead. “Never came up.”

He moves to start unwrap his hands when Harry tells him to wait (a little too quickly), the man chewing his bottom lip before flashing a grin.

“Would you like to spar?”

“Oh, I haven’t—”

“Don’t worry, I’ll go easy on you.”

Merlin raises his eyebrows and cocks his head to the side. “Is that so?”

“Let me warm up first, and we can take it nice and slow for your first time.” Harry accentuates his sentence with a wink, and Merlin doesn’t dignify him with a response.

Harry seems to pick up on Merlin’s skills quickly. The latter knows he has barely any chance against an active field agent, but the two of them both seem to underestimate Merlin. His muscles burn with the effort of trying to keep pace but it’s well worth it—he manages to get Harry pinned on his stomach, one arm held firmly against his back, straddling his waist, and he leans down to mutter, “How’s it feel to get pinned by a tech wizard?” to which Harry responds by rolling much harder than anticipated and flipping the pin. Merlin is caught completely off-guard by the move, arms pinned above his head and Harry’s wolfish grin hovering centimeters from his own face.

And, they should say something. Merlin doesn’t have to say that he taps out, but he should. Harry should move back and say something witty, but he doesn’t. Merlin watches as the grin dissolves into something he can’t decipher, as Harry’s eyes flicker between his lips and his eyes, as sweat trails from his forehead and down the slopes of his cheeks. He hates how clichè the way they finally got together is (and in the future they’ll agree to leave this part out of the story), but they seem to both get the memo simultaneously, both surging to close the small gap at the same time.

It reminds him of his first kiss. He was sixteen and questioning everything about himself, naturally. Part of it was being an angsty teen with undiagnosed problems and a family that refused to believe him, sure. A shy kiss during a school event, that made at least some part of him click into place. The boy’s name was Alan, he was a year older than Merlin ( _ Hamish,  _ he was Hamish then, the line between the two blurring more as he spends more time at Kingsman), he’d taken the impulsive, quiet kid under his wing to make it through his eleventh year. There was a girl prior to that, and Hamish had taken the lack of emotion as a byproduct of... _ whatever _ was wrong with him, and he’d foolishly assumed it would be the same here. When Alan talked about his future there was a  _ hopefulness  _ in his eyes, that he’d make it out of their boring old country town and make boatloads of money, and it made something in Hamish nearly sit still and listen in awe. Which was rare for him.

He laughs when he thinks about it now, his back pressed against the dirty bricks of the building, Alan standing close enough that Hamish could see his individual freckles. Alan glancing around to see if anyone was looking, and part of Hamish  _ wished  _ someone had been there, before bringing a sweaty hand up to pull them together in a dry, chapped kiss. He’d have better, and pretty soon at that, but the way his heart bubbled up through his throat and formed itself into a surprised laugh against Alan’s lips, the dawning realization that he hadn’t felt anything for what’s-her-face because he liked  _ boys, _ Alan getting scared a few weeks later and screaming at him that he was  _ straight _ , dammit. Merlin looks back on the event with rose-colored goggles, because despite everything that came after, it was made him... _ him _ . 

When they break apart for air, Merlin’s lips tingle, and Harry looks more wrecked now than during the entirety of the spar. Some part of him is expecting Harry to recoil and make excuses, but when he searches Harry’s eyes, there’s that same hopefulness that Alan had when talking about escaping, and his heart swoops. Merlin keeps watching as Harry smiles down at him.

“As much as I’d love to keep you like this, can we do this somewhere more private?”

Merlin snorts and is suddenly  _ very  _ aware of how they’re situated, shifting a little under the attention. “How private are we talking? Because there’s a locker room right there and I’d prefer not to alter too many security cameras.”

“God, you’re smart,” Harry breathes, but before he can start to move up Merlin cranes his neck to kiss him again.

“How do you think I got this job?”

Two weeks later, Chester assigns him to a job in Dubai.

“I don’t understand, sir.”

Chester is standing in front of him at his desk, a manila folder of information held in his hand, and Harry is right by his side, a smug smirk plastered on his face. What an asshole.

“Galahad has informed me that you’re more than ready for field work, and I believe that having a tech wizard onsite will provide useful in the future.”

“With all due respect, sir, I’ve not been put through any of the necessary training for field agents.”

“Do you know how to use a gun?”

“Yes, but--”

“Do you know the technology you’ve build inside and out?”

Merlin sighs and Harry bites his lip to hide his smile. “Yes, sir.”

“Galahad will help you train until the two of you head out on Saturday. I have complete faith in his skills and yours. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

Neither Merlin nor Harry move until the door slides shut behind Chester, and Merlin grabs the first thing he can reach (a pen) and throws it at Harry. “What the fuck?!”

“It’s a waste to just let you rot in this chair like John did.”

“I have so much shit to do around here, I don’t have the fucking  _ time  _ to be running around on the field! Do you know how hard my job is, Harry?”

Harry nods and sits on Merlin’s desk, earning a groan from the latter.

If only his father could see him now, defending his right to be behind a desk.

When he was twenty and out of school, sitting at a cubicle filing taxes, he was absolutely miserable. It was a pretty big law firm, but he never wanted it. His cubicle was void of anything personal, which he could say the same about his office now. Hamish didn’t plan on staying long. He didn’t know where he’d  _ go _ , but he couldn’t sit there. He remembers his dad kneeling in front of him once when he was younger when he’d asked if he would have to grow up to be like him sitting behind a desk all day. His father smiled sadly and said, without a hint of irony, “Nobody was born to be behind a desk.” 

Now, he glares at Harry as he explains how useful it would be to have someone on the field able to hack into things remotely.

“Just think about it, alright?”

“I don’t have much of a say in the matter. Get out.” Merlin busies himself with something in front of him, but mostly watching Harry over the top of his glasses as the agent opens his mouth to argue before storming out of the office.

Later, Harry corners him in the kitchen while he’s making tea, pressing his face into the back of Merlin’s shoulder and muttering a muffled apology. Merlin turns, and Harry gives him a small, apologetic smile.

“I should’ve asked you before going to Chester. I hope you understand why I think it would be a waste of natural talents if you sit in your office forever, right?”

Merlin nods in agreement and he smiles when Harry deflates in relief. “You’re right, I just worry too much about getting behind on my work. My coworkers are more than capable in holding down the fort while I’m gone.  _ And _ I get to train with one of the best.”

Harry rolls his eyes and rests his hands on Merlin’s hips, and Merlin tenses a little because he never cared to brush up on the professional relationships section of the rules. “Oh, piss off.”

“Statistics never lie, Galahad.”

“ _ Statistics never lie, Galahad, _ ” Harry mimics, voice high-pitched and awful, and Merlin shoves his shoulder in return.

* * *

A year later, Harry walks into Merlin’s office, talking about his debrief on his honeypot mission in the States, and stops dead in his tracks. Merlin looks up from his work and turns in his chair, raising an eyebrow in silent question.

“You were saying?”

“What. The  _ fuck.” _

Merlin hides a smile as Harry strides over, staring intently at the top of Merlin’s head.

“It was on its way out anyway.”

“You can’t just shave your head and  _ not  _ tell me! I was gone for  _ two weeks!” _

“Are you saying it looks bad?”

“No, you look very handsome and it suits you, but—” Harry sighs and squints at Merlin. “You like having your hair pulled.”

Merlin throws his head back and laughs, loud and hearty, and Harry grins at him and chuckles along with.

“I’m sure we can find something to fill that void.”

“Is it me talking about how much of a pillow princess this woman was? Because I still want to complain.”

The next morning, in the early hours where everything is groggy and slow, Merlin decides he’s in love with Harry. It’s a simple gesture, Harry sliding closer than he’d dare while they slept, chest to back, one arm draping over Merlin’s hips with his fingers barely skimming over the skin of his stomach and making him break out in goosebumps. Harry chuckles, low from sleep, and presses a gentle kiss to the nape of his neck, nose cold where it gets squished a little from the act. Something in Merlin stutters and explodes, like he’d been hesitant to accept that Harry cared for him so deeply and  _ truly _ , and his whole body warms while his heart tries to escape from his chest.

When he does tell Harry about it one day over dinner, Harry shyly admits that he doesn’t remember. But it’s okay, because Merlin doesn’t remember Harry’s moment, either. It was a few weeks after Merlin’s, probably. Harry had just gotten back from a high-stress mission, the whole thing four days of being on-edge tracking something or whatever, Merlin in his ear the entire time and feeling it with him. The whole process was exhausting, tedious, and Harry desperately needed a solid shower and a ten hour sleep.

Merlin had greeted him at the landing pad as per usual, and Harry could tell the only one listening to Chester talk was Chester himself. As soon as they got through the business, Merlin nodded his head for Harry to follow him and they went back to his office, the promise of a couch the only thing propelling Harry forward.

“I couldn’t get Arthur to budge on having you debrief, but I managed to get him to let me do it in private,” Merlin said as they walked back, a step ahead of Harry, “I took a lot of what you told me during the mission and made it into your debrief statement while you were on the ride back, unless you have anything new to report?”

The door to Merlin’s office slid open as he posed the question, and Harry shook his head dumbly as he followed Merlin inside.

“Excellent.” The door slid shut behind them. “I put a pot on for you and there’s blanket on the couch. Feel free to get comfortable, I have some things to finish up and we have to make your debrief believable. You need anything else?”

Harry has a small smile on his face as he retells the story, watching Merlin like there’s nothing else in the room. “It was someone had shocked me awake. I understood what it was like to be genuinely loved, and I never wanted to sleep again.”

“But you did.”

Harry laughs and takes a sip of his wine. “Like a baby, thanks to you.”

Harry proposes three times.

The first, a non-event. They’re laying in bed--well, Harry is laying, Merlin is sitting up and writing up notes. Harry watches the ceiling and listens to the methodic scratching of pen on paper, thinking about the shapes of the letters of Merlin’s tidy handwriting, when he blurts it out.

“Will you marry me?”

Merlin is caught off-guard by the question, Harry’s not looking but he can tell by the way the pen falters on the page. If he did look, he would see Merlin trying and failing to hide a grin.

“Not right now, I have work to do.” The pen goes back onto the paper, and Harry is content with that.

The second, a distraction.

An intel mission in Shanghai in order to dismantle a high-functioning illegal weapons trade from the inside out. Harry, Percival, and Merlin were undercover at the fundraiser gala, the two field agents talking shop and taking notes while Merlin ducked into one of the offices upstairs to steal information on the high-ranking members.

“They’ve noticed you’re gone, Merlin,” Harry mutters, hiding his mouth behind a martini glass.

“I need more time, Galahad, can you do anything?”

“We can try to touch weapons and start something that way,” Percival chimes in, far too happy despite the situation at hand, and Merlin rolls his eyes.

“They’ll scan the area immediately. Use your brain, Percival. I need a few more minutes, can you do anything non-violent to keep them off me?”

Harry slams back the rest of the almost-full martini and sighs. “I’ve got an idea. Percival might not be too fond of it. Take your signet ring off.”

“Why—”

“Just listen, Percival, I don’t have the time for this,” Merilin snaps, and he focuses back at the task at hand.

Merlin hears gasps through his glasses and he has to think if he heard any gunshots, but when nothing follows, he relaxes a little.

“John.”

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

“I know this—this isn’t the most  _ opportune  _ of times, and I hate to intrude on someone else’s day, but I’m afraid I can’t wait any longer.”

Merlin says, “Are you shitting me?” at the same time Percival whispers, “What are you doing?” and Merlin can hear the smile in Harry’s voice. God, he’s good.

“You’ve made me happier than I’ve been in my entire life. You made me understand what it is like to be genuinely  _ loved _ .”

Merlin is glad he just has to wait for the information to download, because he’s suddenly forgotten how to breathe.

“You’ve...kept me alive more times than I can count, and I can never repay you for that. So, John Ainsworth, will you marry me?”

Merlin doesn’t have time to process anything as the computer finishes downloading the files and he grabs his things to leave, directing the two men to use their new engagement to slip out unnoticed.

When they make it back to the plane to take them home, Percival makes a face and wipes his mouth dramatically.

“I don’t think I’ll ever be aroused again in my life.”

“You and I both know that’s not true,” Harry chuckles, tugging the bottom of his suit jacket to straighten it out. Merlin remains silent, opting for going to the onboard computer to start looking through what he downloaded.

Percival retreats to the back of the plane, leaving Harry awkwardly watching Merlin’s back as he types away on the computer.

“Touching speech,” Merlin says finally, spinning around in his chair, “the codename kind of tore me out of it.”

Harry laughs softly and Merlin beckons him close to kiss him.

“Did any of it get you?” Harry asks as he pulls back, face still hovering close to Merlin’s.

“You’re going to have to try harder than that.”

The third, he says yes.

Harry had managed to get them an extra two days in Italy after their mission, and Merlin was expecting it. They were practically married as it was--Merlin has been living in Harry’s apartment for the better part of the four years they’ve been together, they bicker like they’ve been married for ages--but at this point, it feels necessary.

He knows how much Merlin values his privacy, so he proposes in their suite. The first night they arrive there, while Merlin is looking out on the city of Florence below, he gets on one knee and clears his throat to catch his attention. He simply asks, and Merlin feels tears prick his eyes as he laughs and says, “Of  _ course _ , now get up.”

They end up just filing the papers and getting it over with. Merlin had tried to file their marriage himself, but Harry shot that idea down as soon as it came up. Neither of them wanted to plan a wedding, so instead they took two weeks off and went to the Maldives. It’s low maintenance and everything they could’ve wanted. When they return to work, tanned and donning rings to boot, nobody congratulates them. There’s a small gift on Merlin’s desk from Chester that goes immediately into the garbage. They get a few looks for a couple days, but Harry goes back out on a mission, and that’s the extent of it.

* * *

Lee dies, and neither of them can sleep right for a while.

Harry blames himself, and Merlin understands why. He missed the grenade hidden in the man’s outfit, Lee sacrificed himself because of Harry’s mistake. He had a wife and a  _ kid _ , Harry had to  _ lie  _ to these already heartbroken people. He had handed off the medallion to the child, and he constantly wondered if there was more he could do.

Merlin swears to never take recruits out on missions again. One of the final tests to see who would get the spot of Lancelot gone horribly wrong, and on his own watch. For weeks, he plans out new, Kingsman-controlled missions for future recruits to go through, working into the early hours of the day writing and rewriting plans that may never see the light of day. He can’t bear with the thought of another recruit dying. He won’t let it happen again.

Chester pushes more work onto Merlin. For two grueling years, Merlin is trapped in a cycle of research and development, upgrading old tech and introducing new tech to Kingsman and, subsequently, the world. Communication systems, a car that contains literally everything, getting a camera and interactive screen into the glasses, a lighter that’s a grenade--Chester spits demands at him and he does it. He never can figure out if Chester’s trying to break him or suddenly he’s as ambitious as ever, but it doesn’t matter. He likes a challenge, even if it wears him down. If he had hair, it would be fully grey.

“I need a break,” Merlin declares as he strides into Harry’s office and sits down heavily on the couch in the corner.

“My word, you didn’t even ask to sit. This must be serious,” Harry teases, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms over his chest, “talk to me.”

“Chester threw another blueprint onto my desk and I nearly snapped at him because of it. I’m interested in making improvements as much as the next guy, but in what world is ‘pistol that can also shoot shotgun rounds’ an urgent need?”

“Sounds pretty cool,” Harry murmurs, and Merlin glares at him. “You’re the brightest person in this whole building. You’re one of the only ones capable of doing such things. Do you know how useful your work has been on the field?”

“Of course, I have to fucking keep track of them all.”

Harry whistles lowly and smirks. “Very gentlemanly.”

“I hate you,” Merlin huffs, but he’s smiling.

“You wouldn’t have married me then.”

“We all know I married you for your body.”

“There he is,” Harry chuckles, “I’m sure you’ll get to see it more personally when you come home tonight.”

Looking back, Merlin should have expected it.

A solo mission tracking down a small drug ring in Cuba. Something should’ve clicked in his mind that maybe he wasn’t meant to return.

“You’re more than qualified and a lot of their technology could be useful to us. They rely on the dark web to do their bidding, so it would be easiest to gain access that way.” Chester did not ask, he never did, merely told him the mission and sent him away.

The night before, lying on his back to watch the ceiling, Harry’s head pillowed on his chest, he voiced his concerns. Harry, ever the realist, just yawned and said, “I’ll make sure you make it out of there alive.”

Each breath he took ripped through his beaten-up lungs, the noise coming out ragged and uneven over the sound of blood pounding in his ears. Next to him, a man stands with a metal baseball bat, ready to swing again at any moment. In front, another uses the tip of an assault rifle to tip Merlin’s chin up.

“I’m going to try this again,” he drawls, pressing the gun into his Adam’s apple, “where are you from?”

“I’m ten minutes away with backup, Merlin. Hold him off as long as you can.” Harry’s voice crackles in his ears, tinged with worry but otherwise professional. He grits his jaw, and cold shoots through his body as the man cocks the gun.

“I don’t want to do this. You seem like you’d be a great asset to our cause.” The gun travels down to dig into the front of Merlin’s knee, and he gets flashbacks of Harry’s similar stunt to the man who killed Lee.

“What do you want to know?”

He spills some information off the top of his head about MI6, doing his hardest to sound hesitant while doing so. None of the information is relevant, and the men grow more impatient as he babbles on, but soon enough the front door of the metal compound is kicked in and chaos breaks out.

The chair that he’s bound to is kicked down by the man interrogating him, and panic rushes through him. The man almost looks...apologetic, for a moment, before the gun is fired. Twice, once by each ear, the sound making his ears roar and ring. He screams, but can’t hear it. Before someone shoots the interrogator dead, he brings the butt of the gun down hard on the middle of Merlin’s forehead.

He comes to, briefly, on the transport back to Kingsman. Harry is pacing in the aisle next to where the makeshift bed is located, talking frantically to someone presumably through the glasses. A high pitched ringing echoes in his ears, faint and distant, and when he opens his mouth to speak, he can’t tell if he says anything. He must, because Harry is torn from his conversation, his head whipping to meet Merlin’s gaze.

And...he’s talking. Merlin can pick up a word here and there based on his lips, but everything else is muffled and barely there. Like someone is holding his head underwater.

“I can’t…” He mumbles it like a mantra, but he can barely hear it come from his mouth. Harry must figure it out, his face dropping into some form of sadness Merlin remembers from Lee’s death, and he doesn’t have it in him to protest as Harry adjusts the IV in his arm to put him back to sleep.

When he comes to, again, he’s back in Kingsman. There’s the sickening undercurrent of drugs in his body; the feeling of needing to move in some way covered with a wet blanket that makes him want to scream. He slams his hand onto the button to get a nurse or  _ someone  _ in the room, and when the door swings open to reveal Chester, followed closely by Harry and one of the nurses Merlin hasn’t met yet, he pushes himself to sit up.

“This is...a rather unfortunate scenario for me, Merlin.”

There are bulky, uncomfortable hearing aids attached to him, weighing down his head, and despite how much Merlin wants to tear them out, the realization that he  _ can’t _ somehow hurts more.

“While I want to be accomodating for you in the future,” Chester continues, inching closer to the bed, “I don’t see how we can have a deaf handler, since most of your job lies in the listening.”

“I can--”

“You can make stuff, yes, but I have already been more than understanding with your other...problems. How do I know, Hamish?”

Merlin’s got tears in his eyes, fingers white-knuckle gripping the edges of the bed, breathing coming out labored and rattling in his chest. Chester is to his side, unblinking, hands held behind his back, and Merlin can tell he’s clenching his jaw. Merlin is a wild animal on its last leg of life; he’s sobbing now, begging to not get kicked to the curb like he’s seen so many times before, a mix of future schematics and empty promises falling from his mouth like blood. And it scares Harry, for this is the first time he’s ever seen Merlin out of control. 

“Chester—Chester  _ please,  _ just-just  _ listen _ to me,” the choice of wording makes bile rise in his throat, choking off a sob that threatened to spill over, “I can—I can still do things, you can’t toss me out like a fucking  _ dog! _ Please I—I don’t know what I’d do.” When he trails off, his voice cracks; it’s not his proudest moment but it’s not something he can drink away the memory of. 

He’s gasping for the breath that’s being choked out of him by Chester’s silence, tear tracks burning red hot down his face. He can barely hear himself, and he doesn’t know if it’s the panic settling in his bones or his  _ bastard  _ ears. Chester remains silent, and Harry remains shell-shocked and glued to the floor. Merlin doesn’t know why they’re still here if they’re going to stay silent, watching him like some sort of caged zoo animal. Anger gives way into the sickening tiredness that comes with the drug that  _ he  _ helped create, and he searches Chester’s eyes for anything that’s not  _ pity.  _ But before he can do anything there’s hands on his chest, pushing him back onto the bed gently, and his world closes in a vignette.

(Later, when the two of them are at home and ready to go to bed, Harry admits that he screamed at Chester. Stormed into his office and yelled his voice raw, defending Merlin’s right to remain in his position.

“I probably looked like an idiot,” Harry chuckles, “but I couldn’t just let him cast you aside like that. Especially because living with you would be extremely difficult.”)

The next day, when he’s already managed to make a nurse grab his clipboard so he could start working, Harry knocks on the door to enter. When he does, he sits tentatively on the side of the bed, and stays uncomfortably silent.

“Alright, I’ll bite. Am I fired?”

“What? No, not even close.” Harry fidgets, and Merlin slaps the clipboard down on his lap.

“Then can I help you?”

“I know you’re working on permanent implants. And I think it’s a bad idea.”

The anger melts off Merlin’s face and he glances down at the board, a schematic for a chip implant clear as day on the screen. He sighs, and pushes his glasses up to rub at the bridge of his nose.

“It would just be easier.”

“Your whole life you’ve wanted to be in control, right? And I know this isn’t...ideal, and I understand why you’d want to permanently fix this and be on your way. But I just think having control over something would be nice.”

Harry takes one of Merlin’s hands between his two, offering him a small smile. Merlin hesitates for a moment, and Harry squeezes his hand.

“You could tune out Chester in meetings.”

“Now I’m interested.”

Harry laughs and Merlin smiles down at his lap, before reaching for the clipboard and archiving the current plans.

“Never know when it’ll come in handy,” Merlin explains when Harry raises and eyebrow at him, and the two of them chuckle softly.

“Promise you won’t turn them off while I’m talking to you?”

“What?”

Harry reaches a hand to shove at Merlin’s shoulder, and the two of them are startled out of the moment by a brisk knock on the door.

* * *

Merlin is jolted awake by a knock that’s distinctly Eggsy’s, and his wrist aches from supporting the full weight of his head. There’s no way of telling how long he’s been out--Harry hasn’t moved, and he can’t quite remember when he dozed off--but he doesn’t have to think about it for long.

“You’ve been in here for three hours without a peep. I got kind of worried,” Eggsy says as he enters the room, carefully holding a cup of tea in front of him.

“Cheers, lad. I must’ve fallen asleep at some point.”

“You need to go home at some point, you know.” Eggsy plants himself on the arm of the couch Merlin is sitting in, and Merlin shifts a little to let him get comfortable.

Harry had spent more time than he’d like to admit keeping track of Eggsy in his formative years. Coming home annoyed when Eggsy dropped out of the Royal Marines, or when Eggsy dug himself into a hole of fighting the law and fighting other people. He leaped on the chance to help Eggsy change his life for the better--but he never expected the benefits to go both ways.

They mourned Harry’s death together. Albeit they didn’t have much time, working side-by-side with Roxy to stop the end of the world does not allow for any time for tears. But they did--gave him a proper toast and everything. Eggsy reminisced about Harry and the good he did. Merlin did not.

“I guess I want to limit the chances of me not being here when he wakes up.”

“I think those chances are still pretty high.”

Merlin cracks a smile and glances up at Eggsy. “There was once where Harry was unconscious from wounds. Early after our marriage, mind you, so we were fresh in the second honeymoon phase. When he woke up, I slapped him for being reckless.”

Eggsy covers his mouth to muffle his laugh, “You’re takin’ the piss!”

“Absolutely not. He completely ignored my instructions and nearly got himself killed. He deserved it.”

“What’d he do?”

“He knew I was right.”

They fall silent, Merlin taking a few sips of the tea to fill the time. He sets the cup down on the side table and pushes himself to stand up, ignoring his knees protesting against being straight. “I need to thank you.”

“What for?”

Merlin forces himself away from Harry’s comatose body, facing Eggsy with a polite smile. “Killing Chester.”

Eggsy snorts and stands up, gesturing toward the door. “Please tell me there’s context for that.”

Merlin grabs his clipboard off the couch, casts a last glance at Harry, and tells Eggsy the story on the way out.

* * *

When Harry wakes up, Merlin’s in the middle of a mission.

It’s like all the anxieties of the past week of Harry’s coma slam into him at once—every part of his body wants to scream and run to Harry, but he can’t. Merlin tells Lancelot to take a left at the fork in the hallways towards the lab. His voice shakes a little, and Lancelot says nothing.

He sees the operation through until extraction, wishing Lancelot a safe flight home before shutting down his station and making his was to the infirmary. He’s trying hard not to run but his body’s shouting at him to  _ sprint _ , and before he knows it, Eggsy is catching his arm outside Harry’s door.

“I don’t want to scare you,” Eggsy says, immediately scaring Merlin, “but he...he doesn’t remember.”

Merlin’s blood runs cold. “How much doesn’t he know?”

“Didn’t know me. Kingsman. Sure as hell remembers butterflies.”

Despite everything, Merlin cracks a smile, and he nods at Eggsy before knocking on the door.

“Come in.”

“Hello, Harry.”

It’s like all the years of spy training have completely left Harry’s mind; his face tells no lies. He’s wondering why people know his name but he doesn’t know theirs, Merlin can tell by the slack-mouthed gaze and the furrowed eyebrows. The eyepatch looks much better now that he’s conscious and has a semblance of color.

“And who are you?”

Merlin’s glad he still has his spy training; he masks that stab in the gut with all his might, keeping his face smooth and unreadable. He wants to cry. The skin around his mouth feels too tight as he gives a polite, lukewarm smile. “My name’s Merlin.”

“Will you tell me what’s going on?”

“I can certainly try.”

Eggsy finds Merlin hunched over at his desk, holding his head in one hand and a shaking glass of scotch in the other. He doesn’t try to hide it, not anymore; this is hard on both of them, harder dealing with Harry’s death a second time. Around Merlin there are plans for jogging Harry’s memory--details of his past missions, Mr. Pickles, the water test--they’re scrawled messily and tossed around, and it worries Eggsy to see Merlin’s desk in such disarray.

“You should’ve gone home by now.”

“I should’ve done a lot of things, Eggsy.”

“Merlin--”

“I should’ve seen Kentucky coming. I should’ve known he wasn’t dead sooner. I should’ve--” he breathes a laugh, blinking up at the ceiling to keep the tears from spilling, “I should’ve said yes the first time.”

Eggsy doesn’t know what to say. Frankly, neither does Merlin. Instead, he does what he knows.

“You should be heading out, Galahad.” His voice catches on the last syllable.

“Merlin,  _ please.” _

“That’s an order.”

* * *

None of them work. Not a single, bloody test. Harry’s offended when they offer any life for him that’s not lepidoptery, he calls Merlin  _ disgusting  _ for trying the water test, the damned dog nearly breaks through but. Nothing. Merlin locks his office door and throws the glass whiskey bottle against the wall as hard as he can, and lets someone clean it up as he punches it out in the gym. His muscles scream at him to stop, but it’s the closest he’ll get to feeling in the two weeks.

“You don’t look too hot.”

He has dark circles under his eyes and his torn up knuckles hold the clipboard in front of him, but he still offers Harry that same, lukewarm smile. “Long night.”

“I’ll say.”

“I really hope you can forgive me for...everything.”

Harry shrugs, glancing around at the semi-packed items they brought him after he woke up. “I can’t say I understand, but I can tell you care. So, it’s alright.”

Merlin hums and stares at the dark screen of his clipboard, clenching his jaw to swallow the bile in his throat.

“If I may ask,” Harry continues after a moment, making Merlin look up, “why  _ do _ you care?”

Merlin wants to run. Instead, “You’re, uh, we--we live together.”

“Oh. Like…?”

“Married. Husbands. Been quite a few years.”

Harry stares down at his hands, at the slight indent of his left ring finger where his ring used to lay. Taken off while unconscious, currently in the bottom compartment of Merlin’s clipboard. Which he pops open to take it out and extend it toward Harry.

“If you...want it back.”

“I,” Harry starts, taking the ring in his hand and rolling it between his fingers, “I proposed to you.”

Of course. Of fucking  _ course.  _ “Yes, you did.”

“Multiple times.”

“I did kind of say no twice.”

Harry slips the ring back on his finger, and Merlin feels something burst in his chest. “The second one wasn’t even  _ at  _ you!”

Merlin doesn’t know how to respond, his heart too high in his throat to do anything but go and sit in the couch next to the bed, Harry looking up at him with tears in his eyes.

“I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Merlin gets out on a sob, grinning, “you’re  _ alive.” _

“I didn’t--how long--?”

“Not too long unconscious, two weeks or so conscious but amnesic.”

Harry curses under his breath, and Merlin tosses the clipboard aside to get up and pull Harry into a hug. He’s shaking, but Harry knows better than to mention it.

“Don’t you  _ ever  _ pull that shit again,” Merlin mutters into Harry’s shoulder, and he can feel Harry’s body shake with silent laughter.

“I don’t plan on dying any time soon.”

Merlin pulls back and cups Harry’s face in his hands, one thumb brushing lightly over the bottom of the black fabric that covers his eye. “I don’t think I can mourn you again.”

Harry gives him a sad smile and leans into the touch. “You won’t have to.”

“I’d slap you but I’d feel awful for doing so.”

“Not again.”


End file.
